***No Need For Twisting Spacetime!***

Andrew Joshua Talon

DISCLAIMER: Myu!

Finally, an update! How long has it been, a year? Oh well, please enjoy...

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The system looked like hell.

At least, to Captain John Taggart, as he watched the billowing clouds of debris and the infrequent hyperspace distortions popping up all over the area. He leaned back in his chair, sighing deeply as he watched his crew go about their business on the silver/white metallic command deck, wishing he hadn't been the one given this job. Scouring a region of newly unstable spacetime, almost a square parsec in size, wasn't going to be fun.

Taggart was brooding aboard the TSS Hidden Patriarch, a member of the Niven class light cruiser family. She looked for all the world like a gigantic whale shark, a dark, grey, sleek starship, with a huge, gaping "mouth" at her bow and a fin-like tail at her stern. She had a number of large 'fins' arranged almost exactly like a shark's anatomy, complete with huge fuel cells for 'gills'. She was approximately 900 meters long, 300 meters wide, and 100 meters in height from dorsal to ventral fin.

The Hidden Patriarch and her sisters were unique in the Terran Fleet in that their design was several decades old. Bussard ramjet starships very much like the Niven-class cruiser had been the first ships used for humanity to escape the Sol system, and the Hidden Partriarch differed little from her great grandmothers in the respect of her fusion drive. However, those bussard ramjet vessels had used their propulsion systems to get from place to place. The Hidden Patriarch used hers as a weapon.

With sufficient hydrogen fuel for it's fusion drive, a bussard ramjet put out enough EMP to disable the electronics of the entire night or day side of a planet. The Terrans used these ships in the electronic warfare mode, knocking out the early-warning sensors and computers of a hostile world or base before bigger ships moved in. Because of how much EMP her own systems put out, the Hidden Patriarch's sensor systems were heavily sheilded and extremely powerful. So powerful, in fact, that when she was using the anti-gravition drive standard to all Terran warships, she made an extremely effective reconnaissance and exploration platform.

She was very small compared to other warships, fast, manuverable, and flexible. Aside from her ramjet drive, she carried a formidable armament of beam cannons and anti-fighter missile batteries, and due to the nature of her drive she was very heavily shielded and extremely sturdy. All this combined made the Niven class a very popular light cruiser, and the primary escort vessel in use by the Terran Navy.

Aside from serving in fleets, the Nivens were used for long-range patrol. The Hidden Patriarch had been on such an assignment, when an automatic distress call some hours old from the TAS Isis reached them.

So, the Hidden Patriarch drifted slowly through the chaotic remains of PX-988792, her massive sensor domes scanning furiously through the wreckage.

"Any sign of the Isis?" Taggart asked, staring pointedly at his navigation officer Marlene Suu. She turned and shook her her golden-tressed head, sighing dismally.

"There's too much hyperspace distortion, sir. I've tried scanning in both normal space, subspace and hyperspace, but nothing's... Making sense." Taggart frowned.

"Making sense?" Suu sighed, before typing a few commands up on her keyboard. One of the four main veiwers at the head of the bridge (a standard design in Terran ships) now displayed what appeared to be a 3D image of pop corn maker.

"Something huge went off in both normal and hyperspace, casusing all of spacetime to kind of, well... Go straight to hell. Hyperspace and normal space are twisting into eachother like, well..."

"Taffy?" Suggested the helmsman, Kana Tusume. A Japanese descendant, he smiled in a morbid sort of way at his captain's annoyed expression.

"Something like that," murmured Suu with a slightly amused tone, "I've only seen stuff like this in the Wolf 359 system's Kuiper Belt SINDTR base." Taggart furrowed his brow.

"The Singularity Device Test Range?" Suu nodded, tucking a stray blonde strand behind her ear.

"Yeah, only for the surrounding spacetime area to look like this, it have taken at least twenty five AU bombs to do so," Suu answered heavily. Taggart (as well as several other crewmembers) whistled. Taggart blinked, then shrugged. AU bombs were powerful subspace explosives, so-named because when they went off, they created event horizons at least 93 million miles across before they collapsed. This was an AU, or roughly the distance from the Earth to Sol. The Terrans had secretly been developing such weapons to use against Juraian treeships, because as far as they knew, no ship could survive being within a few thousand kilometers of a quantum singularity if taken by surprise.

"You mean to tell me, it would have taken over two-dozen of our most powerful weapons to produce this kind of shit?" Tusume asked, his normally cocky grin replaced by a flabberghasted expression. Suu nodded, scrutinizing her readings once more.

"Yeah. However Captain-"

"The Isis didn't carry any AU bombs, let alone twenty-five of them," Taggart sighed, finishing her thought. He glared over the wildness of nature laid out before him, idily chewing his lower lip.

"... I am picking up something, sir. Bearing," Suu double-checked her readings, "23 by 98, one light-minute out." Taggart shot a look to Robert Hayden, the engineering/weapon's officer to the port side of the bridge. The dark-haired German national nodded, and immediately began powering up the Hidden Patriarch's weapons systems.

"ID codes? Tusume, bring us to 23, maintain pitch," Taggart stated. Tusume brought the ship smoothly to the indicated course, cutting through a few minor distortion ranges with the starship's pointed nose.

"I can't tell, sir," reported Suu, glaring at the numbers fluctuating rapidly across the screen, "the readings keep getting garbled by something. Can't tell for sure... But it looks like the Isis!" Taggart nodded gravely, taking a deep breath.

"Tusume, take us to within one light second with contact," he ordered. Tusume nodded, urging the ship to move along a bit faster.

"We're within visual range," alerted Suu. Taggart nodded.

"Show me." The middle veiwers flickered momentarily, before displaying the Isis. Not a word was spoken, as all eyes were drawn to the sight.

It was the Isis, all right, but she looked like she'd been partially melted, and shoved together with a Jurian starship everyone knew.

"Tsunami," breathed Hayden behind Taggart, his eyes wide.

This image, however, wasn't the weirdest part. No, not by a long shot. It was like gazing through a window-the Isis and the Tsunami were suspended in an area of relatively clear space, with a bluish planet floating behind them. A little ways away from the two ships, the hectic wreckage of PX-988792 surrounded the 'bubble', which the Hidden Patriarch had been slogging through for the last few hours.

"Uh... Sir? What the hell is going on?" Asked Tusume to a silent bridge.

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"Ugh..."

Blusai could remember a time when she was nine, back on the New Chicago colony she'd been born on, when she'd fallen off her bicycle and hit her head. She'd cried for about an hour, as she'd forgotten her helmet, until her loving mother took her into her arms and back into the safetly of their home.

Out of her reverie she fell, into the now. She opened her eyes.

She was facing the bulkhead of the starboard side of the bridge, lying on her side. She groaned, rubbing her head, before slowly getting to a sitting position. Blusai then looked about her, and for a moment wished she hadn't woken up.

"What...?" The bridge was like a painting disaster involving a six year old, only rather than paint it was materials that were swirled and splattered together.Wooden panels, warped and distorted, served to warp and distort the cool blue metal of Isis's hull. Juraian computer data ran alongside human on the screens, making little or no sense.

Her crew had vanished. She was all that was left on the bridge.Blusai shook her head again, getting to her feet while groping like a blind woman. She stumbled once, staring at her boots and the unfamiliar deck below her, before feeling strong arms supporting wrapping around her like supporting branches of a tree.

"Are you alright?" Asked a soft feminine voice. Blusai looked up, and gaped.

Staring back at her was a blue-haired Juraian woman, a pair of power runes upon her forehead. She looked back at the human woman with pink eyes filled with concern.

"I..." The shock was too much as Blusai's mind collapsed back in upon itself, barely feeling herself slump against her enemy.

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Well, what's for the next chapter? Beats me... R&R, please.